Sunday, May 4, 2014

10 eggs, 6 slices of wood fired bacon, a handful of chopped spinach, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 cup of heavy cream, a handful of cheese of your choice or not and a little salt and pepper. We forgot the cheese...

Take out the fire after you fry the bacon and cool down to 350* to 400* and pour the eggs right into the same pan as you fried the bacon. ( It is a lazy Sunday brunch so why dirty another pan? )

The Frattata is done when it puffs up nice and fluffy.

So delicious! Next time maybe we won't be lazy and we will bake a loaf of wood fired brick oven bread first...

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Holidays and wood fired baking are made for each other. Baking with our wood fired oven is always a "fun day". It brings us together and is really more of a hobby then just a meal. When you add a holiday to the mix it becomes very special. Something about the cold day and baking and roasting outside, the fire and creating great food the way it was done in the past makes our Thanksgiving day our favorite holiday.This year we added roasting pumpkin for our pumpkin pies. I always make my own pumpkin instead of canned pumpkin from the store. I usually boil in down on the stove and it is not an easy task! It was a nice surprise to find roasting the pumpkin in our Roundboy Oven was very easy. The results were a sweeter thicker pumpkin filling for my pies. We made the pumpkin filling a few weeks before and then froze it. We also took a trip to a turkey farm for a delicious turkey breast. On the big day we roasted our turkey in the wood fired oven as usual. The conversation at the table was all about the turkey and the morning was spent around the oven with everyone having a hand in the roasting. Very different from the days of me in the kitchen preparing everything myself!

Cut the top off the pumpkin

scrape out the insides and coat with olive oil

cut the pumpkin in half and place inside down on a baking sheet

We roasted in our Roundboy at a temperature around 400* and the pumpkin was done when the skin was shriveled and soft.

I scraped out the pumpkin from its skin and used my food processor to blend to a creamy filling. I froze the pumpkin in 2 cup quantities as the recipe calls for

Friday, October 25, 2013

Place 1/4 cup of warm water in a small bowl and add yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Place remaining water in your mixer bowl and begin mixer on medium speed. Add remaining ingredients and yeast mixture and continue to mix until dough forms a smooth ball and " cleans" the side of the bowl.

Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

Resume mixing on medium speed until the dough forms a smooth ball.

Place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 2 1/2 hours.

* I prefer to make the dough ahead and let it rise in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Allow the dough to warm to room temperature before using. This recipe makes 4 ten ounce pies.

Original recipe from "The Art of Wood Fired Cooking" by Andrea Mugnaini

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

This year Fall in North East Pennsylvania has been beautiful. Perfect for baking in our Roundboy oven. In the Fall we like to add some comfort food to our Sunday afternoon pizza making. The oven holds the heat nicely after baking pizza. I like to remember that the heat is on....So why waste all that heat stored in the oven?Perfect for our cast iron pot and some ham and bean soup..

And how about some bread after the hot coals burn out.....

This made a nice hot meal for after work on Monday......

We enjoyed a great Fall pizza on Sunday topped with sweet potato and kale on a rosemary and beer crust...